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Right-wing Rants, Technobabble and Other StuffWed, 05 Dec 2018 12:17:36 +0000en
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5G and the Internet of Things — Connectedness We Can Do Withouthttps://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/12/05/5g-and-the-internet-of-things-connectedness-we-can-do-without/
https://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/12/05/5g-and-the-internet-of-things-connectedness-we-can-do-without/#respondWed, 05 Dec 2018 12:17:36 +0000http://tomcox.wordpress.com/?p=1040The “5G” hype is getting feverish, which always should inspire caution and skepticism. One of the great “advantages” of 5G is supposed to be improved connection in the “Internet of Things,” itself another buzzphrase with dark corners. Do I want a “connected” refrigerator with a backdoor to China (or to NSA, for that matter)? From an article on CNET:

“5G ‘will lay the foundation for smartphones, later cars and virtually every electronic device that will be connected,’ Qualcomm president Cristiano Amon said during a keynote. ‘That first step (smartphones) is getting to us in the first half of 2019.'”

Maybe it’s because I’m an old, retired IT curmudgeon, but I really don’t WANT my “every electronic device” connecting to China and the NSA, without my knowledge and consent.

]]>https://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/12/05/5g-and-the-internet-of-things-connectedness-we-can-do-without/feed/0tomcoxWhy I Don’t Trust Pre-Election Voter Surveyshttps://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/10/29/why-i-dont-trust-pre-election-voter-surveys/
https://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/10/29/why-i-dont-trust-pre-election-voter-surveys/#respondMon, 29 Oct 2018 19:03:35 +0000http://tomcox.wordpress.com/?p=1041Models and history no longer work, any more than weather forecasts after a huge volcanic eruption, because the assumptions under which they work no longer apply. (Yes, Trump IS the volcanic eruption.)

Surveys no longer can be relied on because the samples they pull are no longer representative.

Random telephone book samples no longer work, because too many potential respondents no longer have landline phones, and those that do have caller ID and don’t answer calls from unknown numbers.

Cellular phones are not reliably listed anywhere in numbers sufficient to produce answers that are statistically valid, and users also tend not to answer unknown numbers, further reducing the respondent pool.

The geographic confines of a cellular number sample are no longer valid, because cellular users can retain their phone numbers across area codes and can’t be used to reflect opinions in a given Congressional district, county or even state.

Until representative samples can be found that are large enough to be statistically valid (1,000, at a bare minimum, for a geographic area or demographic group), voter preference surveys cannot be trusted. As of now, the only way to get that kind of sample is to send teams out into the field, knocking on doors. That process is so time-consuming and expensive that a sample may have changed based on events or publicity.

I would rather bet on my instincts than rely on the results of any pre-election survey.

Oh, and I did take a Stats class in grad school. Passed it. Not by a lot, but I passed it.

Seventeen years, millions of lives, and trillions of dollars later, and far too many people can’t even identify the enemy, or the enemy’s strategy. It’s not “Terror;” it’s Jihad. And it’s not some tiny minority of Mohammedans, it’s a core tenet of that poisonous ideology, that drives it.

Until we can make followers of that ideology understand that following it to the letter will result in their own deaths, as well as the deaths of their families and friends, and even of innocents nearby, and the obliteration of their cherished architecture, and all physical evidence of their heritage and culture, Jihad will continue.

Don’t tell me this strategy will not work, because the Mohammedans themselves have visited it on every culture they have conquered and destroyed, and they know from 1400 years of history that it works.

When a Jihadi’s own neighbors take him out in front of his house and kill him, and tell his family no such activity will be tolerated, because it means death and destruction will rain down on them and their neighborhood from the sky without mercy, Jihad will go out of fashion with the Seventh-Century savages, and they will go back to living their impoverished, miserable lives without thinking of inflicting their misery and poverty on others.

Sustainability is one of the favored warm and fuzzy, smokescreen terms used by Progressives to justify population control, wiping out private property rights and — ultimately — controlling every waking or sleeping moment of every member of the proletariat.

Once you confiscate and re-distribute the wealth, there is no more wealth. Then, you have to start confiscating income, but a growing Taker Class and a shrinking Maker Class makes income shrink and disappear, as well.

What else are the Makers supposed to do, when they see the fruit of their efforts taken by force and given to Takers? More and more of them become Takers, too. They would be insane not to, wouldn’t they?

Sooner or later, it always happens in Socialism. Heard of Margaret Thatcher, SJWs? Does she come up in your politically-correct history books? She identified the fatal flaw in Socialism, the flaw that always brings about Socialist countries’ collapse:

Not for the wealthy “leadership” of course. They live in sheltered compounds, on smuggled goods and offshore accounts, and life goes on — for them. For you Useful Idiots who put them in power, not so much.

It always ends that way, in Socialism. There is no “doing it right.” There is no such thing as an endless source of “other people’s money.” No one will ever change that, with all the grand rhetoric and glowing promises in the world.

When I was five or six, I thought our table-model radio from the late ’40s was about the coolest thing around… glowing tubes and room-filling sound from around the world (it had AM and two short-wave bands). It was on that device I heard my first foreign languages, and tuning around on AM at night, I was amazed to hear — from my Indiana kitchen — WLS, Chicago, WWL, New Orleans, WSB, Atlanta, WABC, New York, WFAA, Dallas… and a thousand weaker stations, some in foreign languages, fading in and out of the noise. I had begun my life-long fascination with the magic of radio.

On short wave, I got my first good sampling of languages other than English, beginning with Spanish (Havana, Madrid, Mexico City), and eventually, Russian, Swedish, Arabic, Chinese, Polish… and a dozen other language my parents couldn’t even guess at.

Besides hearing the languages, I learned there was a big, wide world, out there. Even at five or six, I understood there was a battle of ideas around that world. Back then, the Voice of America and the BBC were still proud defenders of Western Civilization, freedom, and other quaint concepts. I heard the English language service from Moscow and Havana, spilling their Anti-American vitriol, and I understood they were talking about me and my family.

That RCA table-model radio gave me the picture of the world I carry around today, for the most part, and the ability to make my own pictures to go with the sounds of Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger, Jack Benny, Abbot and Costello, The Grand Ole’ Opry, The Shadow, and Gangbusters.

Technology in the form of radio made my childhood better. Technology is neutral. It is what is done with it that makes all the difference.

The Democrats are like some twit parking his Rolls Royce at the curb unlocked, with the motor running and the keys in it, and then being surprised when it’s stolen.

]]>https://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/1023/feed/0tomcoxThe Russian Collusion Delusion — Why Should We Believe It, Again?https://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/the-russian-collusion-delusion-why-should-we-believe-it-again/
https://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/the-russian-collusion-delusion-why-should-we-believe-it-again/#respondWed, 18 Jul 2018 15:32:30 +0000http://tomcox.wordpress.com/?p=1021Why are we supposed to believe the “Russian hacking and collusion” story, in the first place?

Well, all 17 members of the “intelligence community” made dozens of unsubstantiated assertions to that effect, and they all repeated each other’s unsubstantiated assertions, and the media repeated those unsubstantiated assertions, and then individual media outlets repeated other media outlets’ unsubstantiated assertions, and politicians repeated the media’s unsubstantiated assertions, and politicians repeated other politicians’ unsubstantiated assertions… so those unsubstantiated assertions must be true.

(It’s also called, “The Big Lie.”)

]]>https://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/the-russian-collusion-delusion-why-should-we-believe-it-again/feed/0tomcoxWatching The Media/Marxist/RINO Volcano Eruption Over Helsinkihttps://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/watching-the-media-marxist-rino-volcano-eruption-over-helsinki/
https://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/watching-the-media-marxist-rino-volcano-eruption-over-helsinki/#respondWed, 18 Jul 2018 15:28:55 +0000http://tomcox.wordpress.com/?p=1019Listening to the establishment types on Fox and the Marxist Useful Idiots on the other networks agree on the falsehood that Trump, in his meeting with Putin, made some terrible faux pas or other, and didn’t deal with topics they wanted him to, just enhances my respect for him, and confirms my disregard for them.

At best, they continue to be baffled by him because he doesn’t fit their model of the typical, colorless, spineless hack we have become used to as president. At worst, they think he is The Enemy, and want him keelhauled.

This peculiar alliance between Neo-Con/Geritaric Oligarch Party Trump-haters and Marxist/Mohammedan Trump-haters at least helps us identify who the real enemies are in this sub-critical civil war currently brewing. Maybe the Republican-Democrat dichotomy was never real; just a convenient way to split the rest of us apart and keep us weak and quarrelsome.

Those of us who want the republic described in the Declaration and Constitution are being delineated from those who want an authoritarian world order, powered by slaves (‘Human Resources’) and run by grand strategists in a scheme that reminds one of The Matrix.

Some of us are willing to face the dangers of freedom. We have already taken the Red Pill. We are a threat to the machine.

]]>https://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/watching-the-media-marxist-rino-volcano-eruption-over-helsinki/feed/0tomcox“Democracy” On The Fainting Couchhttps://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/democracy-on-the-fainting-couch/
https://tomcox.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/democracy-on-the-fainting-couch/#respondWed, 18 Jul 2018 15:23:17 +0000http://tomcox.wordpress.com/?p=1014I just reached the threshold of nausea on pompous, self-righteous, melodramatic, lying, ignorant Democrats, RINOs and Marxist Media Sock Puppets swooning and telling us how (hand across fevered brow, teary-eyed and quavering voice, about to swoon and collapse on the fainting couch),

“The Russians HACKED OUR DEMOCRA-CEAAAH!”

What the hell is “our democracy,” anyway? Any lynch mob or gang rape can be a democracy. And how is “our democracy” any different from that?

Once again, you lying Marxist Useful Idiots, we are a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, and NOT a “democracy.”

And if you were so intent on protecting the democratic PROCESS by which we elect our legislative branch, why do you roll out the righteous indignation when anyone dares to suggest we require picture ID to vote? Is that because YOUR democracy only works the way you want it to when vote fraud swings the results your way? Well, yes.

Whatever these screeching parakeets are accusing the rest of us of, they are almost always doing — specifically including hacking “our democraceaaah.”

We don’t need help from Russia to “hack our democraceaaah.” We have plenty of Democrats, RINOs, Marxists and Deep-Staters working hard on that, already.

You know that between bribes and blackmail, there is no more than a handful of people in political leadership positions in Washington or in any other body of American government who are not owned or rented by somebody, and/or currently for rent.

What is the one, most damning, yet eminently provable charge a person could lodge against Donald Trump? What does he not only admit, but brag about?

His successes in business are at least to a great degree, attributable to his exercise of influence (read: MONEY) on politicians and regulators, and their willingness to do his will. He has admitted to that — and even bragged about it — on uncounted occasions.

HE IS A LOBBYIST not for some third party — a company, a union, an industry association, or for a foreign government, or a massive bank — but FOR HIMSELF. He is a lobbyist for Donald Trump, Inc. He buys, or rents, influence and favors, from people who are willing to do that business with him.

Giving a lobbyist the big chair in the Oval Office, letting him occupy the position any lobbyist would sell his soul to influence, just doesn’t seem like a good idea. Trump is not Satan, and he’s not Hitler or Stalin, or Mussolini. He’s a lobbyist, and I just don’t relish the thought of a lobbyist as president.